High School Musical: The Musical: The Series

The result is surprisingly refreshing, even with a title that suggests a sense of redundancy. ... The series is not a reinvention of its genre, but it shines in its little specifics, like the agony of listening to someone slog through reading stage directions out loud, or impromptu harmonies that are really just singing an octave up. The cast is bubbly and terrific, and the zingers (“my mother bounced back from an autopsy!”) keep everything from becoming schlockola.

“HSM:TM:TS” plays with the genre with an insider’s rude glee.

"Musical" works because it acknowledges the ridiculousness of its concept and its very existence.

Your tweenager's newest obsession will be this series that's heavy on humor, music and meta references.

What Federle and HSM: TM: TS deliver outweighs the show’s potential hang-ups: a fresh take on an old favorite that genuinely wants to give its young audience the smart, fun content it deserves.

The result is equal parts clever and sweet, with an energetic cast and a love triangle plot that’s sure to make junior romantics starry-eyed. The Series is still a bit too Disney-sanitized to have much intrinsic appeal for adults, but there are enough meta jokes to ensure that their eyes don’t glaze over.

One-part bloated gobbledygook, two-parts meta satire, this funny/kitschy Disney+ mockumentary series resides somewhere between spin-off, reboot and self-parody. Either way, it's another classic ouroboros from the House of Mouse, which plumes itself with audience nostalgia. Thankfully, it's bright enough...as long as you can stomach High School Musical hagiography.

While the parallels between this high school musical and the other one aren’t hard to spot, it does have a more adult vibe and a snarkiness factor that should pull in a non-Disney crowd.

All the best moments are in that [trailer] preview and everything else is OK but very much a tween show with higher, streaming service-level production values.

Overall, High School Musical: The Musical: The Series is as charming and endearingly tongue-in-cheek as that title would suggest. It mostly exists in that sweet spot between pure empty nostalgia and something completely new, a series that hits you with those sense memories from a simpler time while, once or twice an episode, reaching high notes all its own.

This is a Disney show, so it can’t really go full bore into Ryan Murphy’s brand of strident political incorrectness. Instead it does a warmed-over version, providing a little bite here and there, but otherwise pitching the humor toward lukewarm screwball.

It's a very meta, but mostly meh, homage. ... It's like Glee without very much glee. [11-24 Nov 2019, p.16]

The show seems aimed at fully self-aware meta humor, but it’s not quite sharp enough to pull off self-mockery, and at the same time, too loopingly referential to just be a straight remake.

Beyond an Instagram reference here and there, its first couple episodes just doesn’t do much to reflect that the show is set well over a decade from when Efron and Hudgens first hit the stage, or make a case for why this story might be interesting to tell now beyond “people know what ‘High School Musical’ is and Disney Plus needed content.”